


Voulez-Vous

by Kittendiamore



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Auguste is alive, M/M, Rare Pairings, Romantic Comedy, the regent doesnt exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittendiamore/pseuds/Kittendiamore
Summary: Laurent likes a challenge.





	Voulez-Vous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tumsa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tumsa/gifts).



> Title from the ABBA song of the same name. This was tumsa.tumblr.com's idea and then I straight up took it for myself.

“He ignored me,” Laurent says, still in a state of shock.

“Who did?” Auguste asks. He is looking around the room he has been assigned in the Akielon captial, and not treating this situation with any of the gravity it deserves.

"The Kyros,” Laurent sulks. “The one with the hair and the muscles.”

"You described just about everyone in this kingdom.” 

Laurent scowls. “I’m going to find out his name,” he says.

“Good for you.”

“And then, I’m going to fuck him.”

Auguste drops the candelabra he has just been examining. 

-

It is worse when the gifts start arriving. Prince Damianos sends a beautiful ruby brooch. Prince Kastor sends a gilded hand held mirror. Three different courtiers send books, and handwritten poems, and flowers. 

Nikandros - which is the name of the Kyros, Laurent learns - sends nothing. 

Laurent reminds himself to stay calm. There’s no need to overreact, there’s got to be a simple explanation for this. Clearly when this Nikandros first saw Laurent in the courtyard upon his arrival, he must have had the sun in his eyes and was thus unaware of all that Laurent has to offer. 

An artist once offered to be Laurent’s indentured servant, just for the opportunity to paint him.

Clearly Nikandros just hasn’t had a chance yet to come to terms with Laurent’s beauty. That’s fine, then. Laurent is a generous man, everyone in Arles says so, he is willing to give Nikandros a second chance. 

At dinner that evening, he even unlaces his jacket sleeves so that the Kyros can be given a view of Laurent’s milky white, delicate wrists. 

“How are you finding the accommodations?” Damianos asks, smiling sweetly.

“Adequate,” Laurent replies. He reaches across the table, sleeves falling open, to grab his goblet of water.

Nikandros, who Laurent made sure would be seated next to him, continues with his conversation to some Akielon noble obliviously. Damianos seems to suddenly have trouble holding his cutlery properly and drops his fork.

Laurent accidentally knocks his knee against the Kyros’ a few moments later. Nikandros doesn’t acknowledge it except to lean away slightly. 

“It’s so hot in this country,” Laurent says, trying not to let his frustration bleed through into his tone. “How do you like to cool off in the evenings?” 

Nikandros blinks. “The ocean is right there. Go swim in it." 

"Will you join me?” Laurent flutters his eyelashes like a virgin milkmaid.

“I have work to do,” Nikandros replies shortly, then turns to engage in conversation with someone else.

Laurent feels a little lightheaded. This has never happened to him before. This is – there is something terrible wrong here. Laurent vows that he will not give up until he has the Kyros in his bed.

—-

There is a wrestling match. Laurent watches. And the Akielons say that the Veretian court is obscene. The Veretian court has never slathered muscle-bound nude men in oil and had them roll around in mud together. Laurent definitely would have attended if they did. 

He watches Nikandros pin one of the other boys, Pallas - who does not look put out at all from the defeat - and comes up with another plan. 

Laurent approaches Nikandros later. “I have a new found interest in the Akielon variety of wrestling. Do you think I’d be good at it? I wouldn’t mind it if you tried me out. Should I get some oil?” 

Nikandros sighs. “Fine,” he says. “Go to the training ground tomorrow after lunch.” 

Laurent does. And rather than meeting Nikandros, there is a large, much older man in his place.

“I am the master trainer for wrestling,” The man says. He is balding. “Kyros Nikandros said you were interested in learning the basics." 

"I would love to,” Laurent replies, and then he limps slightly. “Except I think I sprained my delicate Veretian ankle slightly on the way here, so it is probably not a good idea at the moment. I’m going to go lie down now.” 

-

After that, he tries everything. He rolls up his pant legs a little to display his ankles. He lets his hair out, long and golden against his shoulders, which Nikandros does not comment on except to say that it’s “impractical” to wear his hair loose. 

He wears his favourite blue jacket that was made specifically to match his eyes. “What do you think?”

Nikandros frowns. “Of what?” 

“My outfit.”

Nikandros barely spares him a glance. “You’ll get heat stroke.” 

“It matches your eyes,” Damianos offers him. 

Laurent frowns.

—-

The next day he wears a chiton, which is essentially a bed sheet that is pinned to resemble a dress. Three men walk into various objects that day. Damianos drops a pitcher. Prince Kastor trips on the hem of his cape.

Nikandros looks at him for a long moment. 

Laurent’s heart rate starts to speed up. This is it. This is the moment he has been waiting for.

“You’ve pinned it awkwardly,” Nikandros finally says. “You should have a servant help you if you cannot dress yourself.” 

What the fuck. 

—-

“I don’t get it,” Auguste says, biting into a grape. “Do you even like him?”

“That’s not really the point here,” Laurent tells him. 

—-

There isn’t an opportunity to flirt the next day, because Damianos takes him, Nikandros, and Auguste on a ride through the country side, and Laurent rides ahead for a bit only to get separated from them all.

In his wanderings, he comes across an old woman with a broken fence. She is trying, with great difficulty, to fix it.

“Would you like some help?” Laurent calls out to her. 

She would. Her grandson is in town and she can’t risk their sheep escaping before he can get back to fix it. It rained the night before, so the fence probably broke in the storm, and this also means that Laurent gets absolutely coated in mud while he helps.

The fence is almost fixed by the time that the others find him, and Laurent looks over at them and feels an awful amount of embarrassment wash over him. He is covered in dirt, his riding jacket long ago taken off so that now he is only in a sweat-soaked, white undershirt. There is a rip in the knee of his pants. He’s pretty sure there’s grass in his hair.

“You’ve been busy,” Auguste says, laughing from atop his horse.

“Do you want a hand?” Damen asks. 

And Nikandros. Nikandros is looking at Laurent with an air of shock about him. He is gazing as if this is the first time he has ever actually seen Laurent. 

Laurent has finally captured a moment of Nikandros’ attention, and his cheeks feel warm while his stomach flutters with something like nerves. 

–

He is now entirely committed to his plan. The issue is, he isn’t sure where to start. He’s not positive what it is that made Nikandros stare at him like that, considering he had looked like an absolute mess at the time. Perhaps it was the white undershirt, which is also slightly see-through in the right lighting? Maybe he can use that.

“Would you care to duel with me?” Laurent asks.

Nikandros has already knocked the swords from three different men’s hands. His hair is tied back and there’s a hitch in his breath that Laurent would like to put there in another context.

“Should I get the wooden practice swords?” Nikandros asks, an eyebrow raised. Laurent is unsure how an eyebrow can be attractive, except that Nikandros’s are.

“I’ll try not to cut you too badly,” Laurent replies, dryly.

Nikandros gives him a considering look. 

Nikandros has very good swordsmanship. He was clearly trained by a master, and his moves have a textbook like perfection to them that it is difficult not to admire.

Except Laurent is exceptionally good. He was trained by Auguste, who is the best that there is, and he has also spent the last three matches getting an idea of Nikandros’ style. When Nikandros executes a maneuver that Laurent saw him use to win against the second man he fought, Laurent has already formed a plan on how to defeat it. His blade clashes with Nikandros’, and he hooks one leg around the back of his knee to bring him crashing to the ground 

Nikandros lands heavily on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Laurent holds the point of his blade to Nikandros’s throat. “Do you yield?”

There is a moment where Laurent thinks he might not. Nikandros, breathing heavily, is looking up at Laurent with wide eyes. His eyes are very dark. He opens his mouth, as if to speak, and then closes it again. The moment lengthens. 

Then, so subtle it is almost imperceptible, and almost definitely done without conscious thought, Nikandros’s legs fall open a little, where he lies. “I yield,” he says. 

The tense moment is broken up when some of the soldiers start clapping. 

Laurent finally looks away from Nikandros to see quite a few men looking at him with admiring looks. And quite a few looking at Nikandros as well. That won’t do. 

Laurent offers Nikandros his hand and helps him up. Nikandros’ palm is broad and warm, calloused by years of training and hard work. Laurent likes men who are willing to put in a bit of hard work. Laurent does not let go of his hand. 

“Did that satisfy you?” Laurent asks.

Nikandros has not looked away from him yet. “I would need to see more,” he says, slowly, “to be fully satisfied.” 

Akielons are naturally prudish people. They don’t fuck in public, or even let others use their hands and mouths on them during entertainments. Laurent should treat this moment delicately. He should make some kind of promise to meet Nikandros later in his rooms, or perhaps tap him on the shoulder like he has seen some of the noblemen do their slaves.

Except that Laurent has spent the last month trying to get this man naked, and he has spent the last few minutes getting his blood pumping with violent exercise, and he really doesn’t have the patience to make this subtle. He changes his grip on Nikandros’s hand, tightens it, then turns and walks them from the arena. He can hear wolf whistles and shocked exclamations as they go. 

They get into a hallway, and Laurent pushes Nikandros into an alcove. His back hits the wall. Laurent thinks he might actually like knocking Nikandros around a little.

Laurent rises onto the tips of his toes and makes to kiss Nikandros. Nikandros pushes him back.

“Here?” he says, sounding scandalised.

Laurent pauses. “There’s no one around.”

“In Akielos, we keep intimacy to a private setting.”

Laurent frowns, confused. “We are in an alcove. It is private.” 

Laurent leans forward again, and this time, Nikandros lets the kiss happen. He is very good at kissing, despite how difficult he was to get to kiss. Laurent feels an arm wrap around his waist, which helps with their height difference. Nikandros is practically holding Laurent up on his toes now. Laurent feels a little like a swooning maiden.

Which is entirely inappropriate, considering that Nikandros was the one who had to be chased. Laurent should be the leader in this. He puts his hands in Nikandros’ hair and pulls him down, dropping so that he is flat-footed again. 

Laurent bites gently at Nikandros’s bottom lip, and Nikandros makes a noise.

Laurent pulls away. “Do you have…no, you don’t wear jewellery.”

“Jewellery?” Nikandros asks. 

“In Vere, it is the fashion to keep oil in little pendants around your neck.” 

He watches Nikandros come to terms with that. “We should go to a bedroom,” he says. 

Laurent’s bedroom is on the other side of the palace, which is too far. He has no idea where Nikandros sleeps, although he had been considering finding out so that if the duelling plan failed he could just show up in Nikandros’s rooms naked.

He grabs Nikandros by the chiton and drags him out of the alcove. 

“Where is the nearest bedroom?” he asks. 

“The living quarters are all in the same wing of the palace,” Nikandros says. 

Laurent reconsiders. “Where is the nearest empty room?”

They end up in the armoury. Laurent chivalrously pushes a chair against the door so that Nikandros will not be caught having his honour besmirched. 

“Ah!” Laurent crows, victoriously, when he finds a pot of olive oil. “I thought you said Akielons kept it to the bedroom.”

“That is for swords,” Nikandros says.

Laurent gives him an indulgent look. “I’m sure it is.” 

Laurent kisses him again. Nikandros tries to undo Laurent’s jacket except apparently untying laces is not a skill that is taught in Akielos and he makes a frustrated noise against Laurent’s mouth.

Fuck it, Laurent thinks, and he is about to grab a knife so they can just cut through the laces and be done with it, but then he has a different idea. “Do you think,” Laurent says, slowly. “That you could tear it off me?” 

Nikandros gives the jacket a considering look, and then he takes the hem of the material in two hands and, muscles flexing, rips it. The force pulls Laurent towards him. 

Laurent forgets what his next plan is, and instead blinks stupidly at Nikandros while his tattered jacket is pushed off of his shoulders. No, actually, fuck the plan, it was probably stupid anyway. Laurent drops to his knees and pushes up Nikandros’s skirt. 

There are a lot of things that he could say in this moment, except all of the blood in his body is definitely not prioritising his brain right now, so what comes out is, “I love this country.” 

Nikandros’s laugh is cut off when Laurent decides to stick out his tongue and lick him. 

“I heard,” Laurent says, conversationally and mostly just because he has Nikandros’s full attention now. “That if you clench your fist, you can distract your gag reflex. Do you think that’s true?” 

He doesn’t get a chance to reply. Laurent takes the length of his cock in one hand and then licks at the tip again. His hair has long ago fallen out of its ties and some of it gets in front of his face, so he says, “put your hands in my hair,” and Nikandros is quick to obey.

He opens his mouth around the head, and sucks. Nikandros’s hands in his hair clench. It’s a nice kind of pain. He rewards Nikandros by going a little deeper. 

Laurent thinks about the pets in the court and the way they tease with their mouths, turning everything into a long drawn out show. And then he thinks about how he spent a month waiting for this, and he doesn’t really care about showmanship so much as he cares about the act itself.

Demonstratively, Laurent holds up his free hand so that Nikandros can see him clench it into a fist. Then he opens his mouth and lets Nik in as far as he can. After that, he alternates with going deep and shallow, with licking and sucking. At one point, Nikandros pulls his hair much harder than before and Laurent hums. Nikandros evidently likes that a lot. 

Laurent has almost always had a healthy sense of self-esteem. He likes that he is beautiful and that people notice it. It is especially gratifying to think that this man who wouldn’t even give him a second look, who rejected his advances multiple times – this muscled, controlled, self-possessed man – is swearing and very clearly trying to fight the urge to fuck Laurent’s mouth until he cannot breathe.

Laurent gives himself a new goal - he is going to fuck Nikandros until he forgets all of his hard earned self control. It may take some time, but Laurent is willing to put time and effort into this. He is a very gracious person, after all.

By the time he goes back to Vere, Nikandros will not be able to even look at another man without wishing he were Laurent.

I am going to ruin you, Laurent thinks. It’s what Nikandros deserves for not fully appreciating Laurent when he first saw him. 

Nikandros has impressive stamina, but even he isn’t impervious to Laurent’s skill. He warns Laurent when he is about to come, and Laurent, very nicely, swallows it down. He pulls back afterwards, just so he can look up at Nikandros with a smile and lick his lips. Nikandros is breathing very heavily. 

Nikandros blinks, and seems to take stock of his options. He chooses to join Laurent on his knees, and then he is kissing him and pushing him back to lie against the cold ground. Laurent maneuvers them so that one of Nikandros’s thighs is pressed between Laurent’s legs and then ruts his hips up against it insistently. 

“That was very nice,” Laurent gasps against his mouth. “And I enjoyed it very much. But if you don’t get me off soon, I am going to have my brother declare war on Akielos.” 

Apparently that is the right motivation, because Nikandros starts undoing Laurent’s pants. “We would win,” he says, kissing down Laurent’s neck.

He tries to kiss down his shoulder as well, but Laurent grabs him by the hair and pulls him back to his neck. “Right there,” Laurent says. And then, “You forget that I’ve already had you on your back.”

“Next time, I will wrestle you,” Nikandros breathes. “And we will see who wins." 

He has Laurent exposed now and is working him with his hand. He keeps kissing and biting at his neck - which causes a delicious sensation that has Laurent squirming.

"If you wrestle me,” Laurent manages, “I’ll still feel like the winner." 

And then his thoughts get very fuzzy and he doesn’t manage anymore full sentences until he feels himself tumbling over the edge. Nikandros stays on top of him, while Laurent tries to remember what words are.

"Fuck,” Laurent says, eloquently.

He takes a moment to acknowledge that having sex on the dirty ground in an Akielon armoury perhaps isn’t the most appropriate situation for a Veretian prince. And then he takes a moment to wonder how to arrange for them to get caught sneaking out of here, just because it would embarrass Nikandros (and also let everyone know that Laurent has won).

In the end, no one actually catches them sneaking out, but Laurent figures he can remedy that later, and also there is going to be nothing subtle about the kiss marks that are bruised into his neck anyway. Or his ruined jacket.

“I want a rematch,” Laurent tells Nikandros before they part ways. “In my quarters after dinner tonight.”

Nikandros agrees, flatteringly quick. 

Then Laurent finds a servant and gives them some money for an errand.

"I need you to find a gift for my lover,“ he says. "Have you heard of Veretian vial necklaces?”


End file.
